Fellow Lemmings, how to create Social Media that does not have mods?

I am an anarchist, so the idea of the community doing all the work, creating content, and then mods basically ruling over them as a reward, just doesn’t sit right with me.

We the users should collectively be in control of all our social media, economically and with regards of controling what goes on, on there.

All social media get’s its value from the users i.e. the network effect. However the users are subjected to a hierachical place where individuals in power act as tyrants.

We create the value we should be in charge.

Fellow Lemmings how can we create social media were the users are king/queen?

post Scriptum: just having a voting mechanism, might be gamed by unsavory charcters or groups to game such a system, unless voting requires your clear name id, which comes with other issues of course.

Mighty,
@Mighty@lemmy.world avatar

But isn’t modding essentially already Community-driven self-government? Nobody’s getting paid for being a mod right?(?) You can be a mod. Modding isn’t a “reward”, it’s a chore. Sure, some might exploit their position. But self-government here means that the community is then in charge of either taking the power back or creating a different community page. You are not bound to the mods. They don’t have power over you that you don’t give to them

Stamets,
@Stamets@startrek.website avatar

Nobodys getting paid for being a mod, right?

I’m sure as hell not

BigBlackCockroach,
@BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.world avatar

Once a mod is in position, the community has no influence over his/her/their decisions.

DreamySweet,
@DreamySweet@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

I think the only way it could work would be if everyone had their own self-hosted site, otherwise the admin/owner would have power over the users. With everyone using their own individual instance, they can block content they don’t want to see but no one has any power over others.

It would be too complicated for normal people to set up and use, and most wouldn’t want to pay for hosting when they can use Facebook for “free”.

BigBlackCockroach,
@BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.world avatar

most wouldn’t want to pay for hosting when they can use Facebook for “free”.

Unless they get something they won’t find on facebook -> freedom.

I think your idea about everybody basically becoming their own instance is not as bad as it sounds. If social media was peer to peer, using bittorrent technology somehow the hosting issue might somehow be resolved.

That would still leave open the issue of self-governance: how would you genuinely determine the community wishes on any given subject? some may sabotage, others may use bots, other again may try to be disruptive and others may abuse other users or the community.

DreamySweet,
@DreamySweet@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Most people don’t want freedom. They want rules and mods to enforce them so they don’t see things that they find offensive.

If everything is self-hosted, why would community wishes matter? Just block the people that disagree with you and do what you want. If you’re getting abused, block the abusers. If people are disruptive, ignore them. That’s pretty much how the internet used to work back when we were using forums and personal sites instead of modern social media.

BudgetBandit,

The problem with anarchy is that 50% of people are below average intellect, Implementing the normal distribution, we can say that 30% of all people are dumb as fuck. Since we know that the wiser one yields, it is clear that the true power comes from the idiots, rendering it useless.

BigBlackCockroach,
@BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.world avatar

If you want to discuss anarchy let’s do that on an anarchy subLemmy. This is not a political post, even though I mentioned my political leanings, for the sake of full disclosure.

The question i am asking is technical: how to implement community self-governance.

Doll_Tow_Jet-ski,

Still, I think you're misundernderstaing what anarchy is. It is not the absence of people in positions of governance. It is the rejection of unwarranted/unjustified power positions. In that sense, if the community feels that a mod is something they want to, as other people have commented, keep the place clean, and as long as the mod can justify their work and what they do to the community, that is perfectly compatible with anarchism

DmMacniel,

just having a voting mechanism, might be gamed by unsavory charcters or groups to game such a system, unless voting requires your clear name id, which comes with other issues of course.

Why? I thought you were an anarch? Why do you fear that something could be exploited? Why the gatekeeping, when all users should be monarchs?

Communities work because there are members that take care about them, and foster them. If there aren’t then everything will collapse because not everyone shares the same value and even outright disrupt or destroy those communities.

BigBlackCockroach,
@BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.world avatar

anarch

this isn’t a political post, I am asking a technical question. I just stated where I’m coming from to be honest and upfront with everybody.

DmMacniel,

An anarch is the same thing as an arnarchist though or someone who follows anarchism.

BigBlackCockroach,
@BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.world avatar

sure! but i am not posting this for politcal reasons, I only mentioned this to open and honest about my motivations. This post is asking a technical question however

DmMacniel,

Then just open a lemmy/mastodon/pixelfed/peertube instance, bury your admin account, and don’t accept any moderators. Easy.

Pons_Aelius,

Fellow Lemmings how can we create social media were the users are king/queen?

I doubt you can. Every forum I have been involved with that tried this quickly descended into a shitshow.

It is the tragedy of the commons every time.

post Scriptum: just having a voting mechanism, might be gamed by unsavory charcters or groups to game such a system, unless voting requires your clear name id, which comes with other issues of course.

This does little, to nothing. Even when you have to put you account id to a vote it does nothing to people who want to be disruptive and if you can create multiple accounts (which you can here...), vote bombing will happen.

BigBlackCockroach,
@BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.world avatar

I doubt you can

I am convinced it must be possible: The public square doesn’t have moderators. I want to recreate the public square online, I suspect this is mostly a technical problem.

I also see no reason why there couldn’t be a way for the community itself to deal with disruptive actors through some mechanism that does not put any sole individual in power.

Moobythegoldensock,

The public square doesn’t have moderators.

It does and always has. In most jurisdictions, this function is performed by police.

Pons_Aelius,

The public square doesn’t have moderators.

Yes it does and it always has. There has always been social group control in the public square

I also see no reason why there couldn’t be a way for the community itself to deal with disruptive actors through some mechanism that does not put any sole individual in power.

Cool. then create you own lemmy instance and run it the way you want.

Good luck.

one question, if the majority of the accounts on your instance vote to allow CSAM, what will you do?

While you may be an anarchist, someone (you, as the one running the instance) will be legally responsible.

BigBlackCockroach,
@BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.world avatar

Cool. then create you own lemmy instance and run it the way you want.

that is the point I don’t want it to run how “I” want but it should be ran however the community as a whole wants it to.

I think you are misunderstanding my question.

This is not a social issue but a technical one.

If you have votes, they can be trivially rigged by somebody creating a number of sock puppet accounts. If anybody can just do how they please, unsavory characters will flood the site with aweful content. If you require ID or a phone number (those can both be faked) then you just introduce a whole other set of issues, by basically doxing everybody to the people who run the site, and by extension the powers that be.

I feel this problem requires cryptography of some sort and the ability to establish identity for users without de-anonymizing them. idk if that makes sense to you

Pons_Aelius,

I feel this problem requires cryptography of some sort and the ability to establish identity for users without de-anonymizing them. idk if that makes sense to you

Sorry, but that is laughable.

You want people to be both responsible and anonymous at the same time.

You are dreaming.

BigBlackCockroach,
@BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.world avatar

I upvoted you, But sometimes dreams come true, if you make them.

I do not believe this to be laughable at all. We are faced with a problem: Online discourse is the rule, the public square is a thing of the past (as private entities encroach on it) -> if all online places are ruled with an iron fist by sometimes benevolent sometimes maliscious tyrants, we can kiss free speech good bye.

This problem demands a solution. There is nothing laughable about this. ridicule me all you want but I know I am on to something.

Dienervent,

If what you're looking for is a decentralized pseudonymous system. Then this is absolutely possible with today's cryptography.

It's called public-private keys. You create a private key that you can use to "sign" your messages. And people can verify that is was you that wrote the message by using the public key.

No one can pretend to be you because only you have access to your private key and the public key can't be used to find out what the private key is.

It's still anonymous because you don't have to say who you are when you create the private key.

It's not perfect because the same person can create as many different keys as they want. So you can't really "ban" someone. They'll just create a new key and pretend to be someone new.

Bluetreefrog,

This is the beauty of the Fediverse. Don’t like the mods, start a new community. If yours is better then people will come.

BigBlackCockroach,
@BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.world avatar

Don’t like the mods

That is exactly the issue, I love the mods and all other users, this is not that I take issue with any specific individual. The underlying technical issue is not resolved as far as i know. How to determin community will without it being prone to abuse, tempering/manipulation or even outright sabotage (for example from rightwing groups like stormfront).

willya,
@willya@lemmyf.uk avatar

Whoever runs the hardware would be the one(s) in power automatically.

BigBlackCockroach,
@BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.world avatar

what if it was peer to peer? basically ever user contributing with their own hardware, like in bittorrent.

willya,
@willya@lemmyf.uk avatar

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